Today I’m linking to posts I wrote in the past year about sports history, one of the foundations of this blog and something that will become a stronger focus here in the coming months. Over the weekend I’ll link to plenty more sports history writing by others whose work was among the best I read in 2013.

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Baseball

• “Legends of the Dead Ball Era” was an exhibit of baseball cards at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that was on display over the summer, as boyhood souvenirs were transformed from mere collectibles (and very valuable ones) to vital historical components of a vanished time. In February, the book “Tales from the Deadball Era” continues telling the story of a game eventually modernized by commercialism, scandal and a springy new ball.

• I loved, loved, loved the American Basketball Association, and was inspired to write “When the ball was red, white and blue” in February after University of Michigan professor and basketball historian Yago Colas roused up an old post of his about the ABA’s colorful, if forgotten, legacy, and especially, as he saw it, “its resistance to narrative.”

Football

• The continuing anguish over concussions and other crippling injuries in football was encapsulated this fall with the PBS Frontline special “League of Denial” and the publication of a book with the same title. But despite the tragic stories of diminished memories and suicides of NFL players, the sport continues to draw young men into its fold.

In all the fulminating over violence, concussions, brain damage, suicides, lawsuits, bloodlust, carnage and bounty-hunting, what’s missing is an acknowledgement of an aspect of human nature that draws young men to the game, including my hometown standout, and always will.

• In October, after “League of Denial” did its thing in making the NFL look really bad, I followed up with “A century of ‘reforming’ football.’ “ I’m as troubled as anyone by how the league has dodged accountability here.

But as Nate Jackson reveals in his recent NFL memoir, “Slow Getting Up,” there will always be men like him “who want to hit the ground hard and get up shaking myself off because I think I’m dead. That’s the feeling I want.”

• Proudly unsentimental about the beatings he dished out — and accepted — was Deacon Jones of the Los Angeles Rams, who died in June.

Miscellany

• The history of the Negro Leagues was just one part of a special remembrance sof segregated sports in America in August to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

In “The backroads of Jim Crow sports” I highlight efforts as the preservation of the history of the Negro minor leagues and an oral history project in Mobile, where the feats of African-American athletes were well-known before Henry Aaron and Willie Mays reached the majors.

Soccer

• Phil Woosnam never wavered in his belief that soccer would emerge from its long obscurity on these shores. The former commissioner of the North American Soccer League was someone I got to know covering soccer in Atlanta in the 1990s, after he returned to the town where he won the first NASL title as coach of the Chiefs. As I wrote upon his death in July:

Whether it was the World Cup coming in 1994, the rise of women’s soccer and the arrival of MLS, he always believed the sport had a better future than the naysayers ever imagined.

• Dave Wangerin was a dutiful historian of that obscure American soccer history, even after he emigrated to the U.K. His book, “Soccer in a Football World,” is the definitive work on the subject, and he was given space in the British soccer fanzine When Saturday Comes to expand on what had been a topic of mocking incredulity in his adopted land.

When he died in May, the magazine launched a writing competition in his honor. He left this world concerned about the preservation of American soccer history, something he worked hard to flesh out.

• Allegations of doping in Germany’s national soccer team — including the World Cup winners in 1954 — were reported by the Süddeutsche Zeiting in August, rocking a sport that hasn’t been dogged much by charges of performance-enhancing drugs. It’s not likely that the German sporting public will get worked up over this, given the passage of time and Der Mannschaft‘s accomplishment in helping lift the spirits of a nation that had destroyed much of Europe.

]]>Saving a museum for a forgotten teamhttp://www.wendyparker.org/2013/05/saving-a-museum-for-a-forgotten-team/
Sat, 04 May 2013 23:46:41 +0000http://www.wendyparker.org/?p=6488Tweet

The small museum devoted to a largely unsuccessful team that left that town nearly 60 years ago moved into trophy company space as part of the reconstituted Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame at the end of April.

After operating since 1998 in suburban Hatboro, the A’s museum fell upon hard financial times (and some claim mismanagement), and earlier this year appeared to be on the brink of shutting down.

Much of the musuem’s memorabilia — at least what wasn’t auctionedto prepare for the move — is devoted to the glory years of the A’s in Philadelphia, from 1929 to 1931, when they won two World Series and rivaled the best team the game had to offer, Babe Ruth’s “Murderer’s Row” New York Yankees.

Connie Mack’s best teams featured eventual Hall of Famers Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, Al Simmons and Mickey Cochrane, all of whom he economically acquired to build a powerhouse club. But days after the A’s won the World Series over the Cubs, the stock market crashed, and the Depression took a toll at baseball ticket booths. Notororiously parsimonious by nature, Mack had sold the cornerstone pieces of his club over the next three years.

The Philadelphia A’s not only never reached another World Series, they were among the consistently worst teams in baseball before moving to Kansas City in 1954. Mack died a year later.

But the memories — and the stories — resonate deeply with those who recall them, or who wish to preserve them for future generations. Lou Brissie, one of Mack’s late-era journeyman pitchers (and the subject of a 2009 book by Ira Berkow, “The Corporal Was a Pitcher”), told a suburban Philadelphia newspaper last month that Mack wrote to him and other baseball-playing veterans on World II duty, offering to give him a chance in the game after he suffered serious wounds in Italy.

Brissie, who’s now 88, got his chance while wearing a leg brace, pitching for the A’s from 1947 to 1950, and he still maintains ties to the historical society.

Now the last official connection to the Philadelphia A’s has moved back into town, closer to the now-demolished Shibe Park (later Connie Mack Stadium) where the team played. I’ve always felt being close to hallowed ground makes the work of preservation easier, and I’m hoping this is the case with the relocated A’s shrine.

It’s been 20 years since University of Pennsylvania historian Bruce Kuklick published “To Every Thing a Season,” his history of Shibe Park and its impact on a community of north Philadelphia that’s as much an afterthought to locals as the A’s.

In a 2011 interview with Philly Sports History, as the Phillies were three years removed from a World Series title, Kuklick couldn’t help but place that achievement in a larger historical perspective:

Finally somebody says, “Sure the Phillies are great. Sure Chase Utley is great. But is he the greatest 2nd baseman that’s ever played here? Absolutely not. He doesn’t even come close.” People don’t realize that the 1929, 1930, and 1931 A’s are better than even this team today, which I think is the best team this franchise has had.

That ballpark is right in the middle of the city. And you are in the middle of an urban area. And you walk into this park, and it’s dark and there’s concrete around, and then you come up to one of the entrances to the field, and you see this green diamond. There’s just something there that’s just incredible.

And another one:

My wife and I went on vacation one time to Club Med, and we were talking to some people, and we said, “Where are you from?” and this guy said “Wrigleyville.” He didn’t say Chicago. And we knew exactly where he was talking about. That ballpark is known all over the Western World. And every once in a while, I think, “Gee if they had only had the foresight.” But basically that area went through a really terrible period. It’s now come up considerably on its own. It’s a lot less nasty and dangerous than it was.

One day between the National League Championship Series and the World Series is what’s been allotted, enough time for the Detroit Tigers to fly west for Game 1 tomorrow night against the San Francisco Giants.

Time — television time, to be specific — is all that matters now.

This clip from the “Baseball’s Golden Age” series has nothing to do with the World Series but rather with three perpetually failing teams that left their original cities after playing second fiddle to more successful franchises. This rare (colorized?) footage of the St. Louis Browns, Boston Braves and Philadelphia Athletics is a real treat, a quick glimpse of what became the Baltimore Orioles, Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves and Kansas City and Oakland A’s.